States of Matter
by kinnoth
Summary: Todd recognizes comfort when it's offered, but he doesn't want to forget. NeilxTodd implied


Disclaimer: Not mine

**States of Matter**

Todd waits for the snow to come down before he heads out. He doesn't know what compulsion drives him to do so. He knows only that the sight of dim winter sunlight through misted windows illuminates something that he can't see, but that he knows that he can't face. His friends follow him, wordlessly. They've been silent since they'd sent Charlie in to break the news; he faintly wonders how much they must have dreaded him to leave him the last to know. They'd probably considered not telling him at all.

Welton is a fortress of antiquity, and it traps old air as well as it traps old memories. The hallways are unbearably cold; at least Todd thinks they are. He has his coat on, but only as a technicality, draped over his shoulders by some concerned friend or another. He can't think about the cold. He can't think about anything, and he doesn't notice when he's almost fifty paces ahead of his fellow processionals, doesn't notice when he finally steps outside. It has to be cold – the snow sinks to his ankles and his shoes soak into his feet. His hood is down, and the same wind that slides coyly beneath the hem of his pajamas runs like fingers through his hair. He doesn't try to repulse it.

The sky taints the earth and air a smoky slate gray. The color sharpens the trees, brightens the snow, filters the world through a metallic light that does not soften even in the early morning haze.

Todd looks about himself. It really is lovely: unclean, coarse-hewn edges of a grey world obscured by feathered frost. Through his eyes, it floats in a dazzling halo and he smiles without meaning to, spins around and nearly grins, an ill-balanced and brutal motion that breaks the planes of his face into inorganic angles and lines.

He talks.

Immediately, he knows this is a mistake. The sound of his own voice triggers something in him, muscle memory, dream memory. Or maybe it is the bitter breath of wind that settles heavy on his tongue when he opens his mouth, and he drinks in the cold. It punctures the warm dull comfort of Todd's grief, perforates it, penetrates into his denial and spreads the painful chill of reality down into his throat and into his blood. He can't bear with this. Not now. And the cold tastes like snow, like the pretty frozen color of water. Like the color that was his. Like Neil's absence.

His knees give, and suddenly he has to get it out, the taste, the feel, the apathetic certainty of it. The cold. The bile that rises from his stomach is thick, hot stink, dissolving into the snow, and he's not so much sick to his stomach as he is sick to soul. He's on his heels now, and suddenly he can't _stop_ talking. Babbling.

Todd recognizes comfort when it's offered. So when Knox clutches his back and Meeks and Pitts and Charlie flank his sides, he knows what they are doing. Sees it in their faces, though he feels he's going blind; hears it in the cracks of their voices as they soothe and placate and urge him without words to forget, _please_ just forget.

But he doesn't _want_ to forget. Already the cold sweet taste of Neil's absence is overpowering the warm breathing salt of his life. Todd chokes on his next breath, deliriously tries to swallow air and expel snow at the same time. And suddenly the warm circle of his friends is suffocating, thawing, bridging into reality, and the cold threatens to rush out, and the numbness with it.

So he runs from it. Stumbles like a three-legged cat because he knows his color is water and once it had been ice and if he tries hard enough, runs hard enough, he can catch the frost on his skin and maybe that will finally be enough to freeze his heart from shattering.

He only screams because he can't think of anything else to do. It hurts, it hurts but only if he _thinks_ about it, and the ripping of his vocal chords is enough to distract him from the grief seeping through his veins.

Todd has been the color of water. Neil had been the first to recognize that and had reflected through him such a light, his own light, something so bright and vivid that Todd had become like some unbound and unfettered vapor, and for those brief few months the stagnant state of his own inadequacy hadn't mattered a thing in the world.

And now he can't find it anymore.

()It is very still, overlooking the lake. The glitter of the water is frozen into gauzy lattices beneath the sheer of winter's sun. In the muted silence, the memory of a red autumn afternoon is awash in tones of gray; laughing, shouting forms flicker and flutter in the negative spaces between snowflakes, decked in the prose of midsummer's play. Todd sways to himself, lost in the memory of his own inhibition, bumping arms and hips and bellies with the ghosts of happiness that lunge and press past through him. His own ghost stops before him, and laughs as a wide, lingering smile is pressed to its cheek. The next words are trapped between them, vanished in the falling snow, but Todd remembers the sound of soft, fond voices, and the color of affection whispering through him, bright and pulsing. And for a slow, quiet moment, he almost forgets that he is crying. He almost forgets. He almost remembers.

He wavers on his heels, forgetting to breathe, but for an instant or few, it's alright. The moment vanishes in the next breath of wind, and the warmth and the laughter scatter like a burst of colorless flowers. This is the very edge of world, the very edge of a knife's blade, the very edge between sanity and forgiveness.

The water moves.

It is very clean, overlooking the past. It lies beneath him, a spread page blotched with ink and mistakes and he regrets no words, only because he dared not write them. But this too, he thinks, will fade in a moment's time, because if he looks up, he sees nothing but white.

* * *

()Implied reference taken from deleted movie scenes. See: http:// www. impawards. com/extras/extra5.mov (take out spaces) 


End file.
